Kennedy Center branding big job for architect
“As a Roman Catholic, Harvardeducated Democrat from Massachusetts, this isn’t simply a design project,” Hunter Tura says. “It’s personal.”
An impresario of branding — one who could easily add “honorary Canadian” to his bio reel — Tura is reflecting on the mission he’s working on these days, which comes bearing the most dynastic of names and arrives at a time of extraordinary regime change in the U.S. capital.
The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — a beacon for sophisticates — is in the middle of a massive, $100-million expansion and it’s the Toronto-based Tura, CEO of the local outfit Bruce Mau Design, who has been enlisted to generate all its new messaging and visual hocuspocus.
Calling it “the most ambitious project I’ve ever worked on,” the 44-year-old Tura — with his ’50sstyle slicked-back ’do and a preppy geniality right out of a Whit Stillman flick — makes the point that the D.C. institution is not only an arts haven, but “a living memorial.”
Moreover, he points out, JFK “spoke so amazingly about the role of an artist in a democratic society and the importance of the performing arts”: a message amply illustrated, for example, in the recent Natalie Portman movie Jackie and yet, something not exactly in vogue in American politics these days.
Tura himself remains much in vogue: an invitation “get” in his adopted town (when he’s in town, that is, given the breadth of his commitments around the world).
A resident of Toronto for the last seven years — where his local bona fides extend to being a hockey dad to the two sporty young daughters he co-parents with his ex-wife — his company’s design tentacles extend to the new museum going up soon in Shenzhen, China, in partnership with London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and clients ranging from Samsung to Sonos. With a background that’s included stints at AMO/Rem Koolhaas and the Rockwell Group, he is also active now on the speaking circuit.
It doesn’t hurt that he has the gift for chit chat and the engine for schmooze.
Talking to Tura is a winding road, one that leads to an anecdote about the old New York nightclub, Nell’s, which was made famous thanks to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, and then to a tale about being seated next to Monica Lewinsky on a plane recently (a red-eye from L.A. to New York). He tells me about a documentary he just watched about Hubert de Givenchy then riffs on the legacy of urban deity Jane Jacobs.
At one point, he shows photos of some popovers because the subject of popovers is never far away when we speak.
It’s his thing, making popovers every Sunday. Yes, that’s right: the man bakes.
But back to branding: the D.C. project is interesting not only because of the composition of the board at the Kennedy Center (its members count JFK’s granddaughter, Rose Kennedy Schlossberg, and Teddy’s widow, Victoria Kennedy), but also because of its scope (re- nowned American architect Steven Holl has created a design that preserves the silhouette of the current building, but with three new pavilions visible above ground).
Asked about bringing in a design team based in Canada, even though he is American, Tura says it’s helped to clarify the project in many ways.
“The Canadians are able to articulate the promise of America in a much greater way . . . it’s fascinating,” he says. “The outside view has been a real asset to us.”
Conversely, being an American in Toronto also informs his point of view. On one hand, he lauds the level of development he’s witnessed since he’s lived here — “it feels more global” — but also finds it worrying.
As he elaborated to the Urban Toronto blog, “On one hand, there are a lot of wonderful new buildings . . . well-built by thoughtful developers and architects who are really trying to create a new, responsive kind of urbanism. On the other hand, there are a lot of schlockey developments that really are not resolved in terms of how they are integrated into the larger urban situation.”
These two realities, he says now, “will take a generation to resolve.”
Tura, meet Toronto. Toronto, Tura.